Three Day Summer(6)

I have no idea what or who I want to be, but I know for certain what and who I don’t. And that’s all I see when I think about going to college. A one-way ticket to future soullessness.

“Hey, are you checking that girl out?!”

A sharp voice brings me out of my unpleasant daydream. Amanda’s.

I look at her in a daze, only then realizing that I’ve been staring at the redhead.

“What?”

“Asshole!” Amanda says as she punches my arm.

The redhead catches my eye and gives me a small, secret smile.

I shrug and smile back before turning away. No need to fan the flames of Amanda’s psychoses.

It takes us another forty-five minutes to get a table. By the time our burgers arrive, Amanda still isn’t talking to me.

But, man, will I remember that meal. A juicy, perfectly cooked slab of meat, doused with ketchup, and large, crunchy slices of sour pickle. Perfectly salted fries, crispy. A Coke.

My consciousness definitely feels ready for whatever’s about to come next.





chapter 7


Cora


I’m afraid, Cora.

I think of Mark’s letter. This is the first time that he has ever said those exact words to me.

His terror is terrifying. My fearless older brother who’s been gone so long now. Almost two and a half years. What could have happened that would cause him to be scared now when he never has been before? Or is it just that he has never told me before? Does he think I’m getting old enough to handle the truth now?

“Cheer up!” a voice says to me, and I look up to see an older guy in a big cowboy hat and white jumpsuit grinning at me. He’s missing several of his front teeth.

“Ready for the time of your life?” he asks.

I give him a small smile. Despite my worry, something about his easy joy is infectious.

“Hugh, I can’t find the gruel.” A girl with frizzy brown hair and a guy with a long beard come up to the jumpsuit guy. They are both festooned with red bandannas with a picture of a white flying pig silk-screened on them. The guy wears his around his arm, and the girl uses hers to pull back her hair.

Hugh looks at them thoughtfully for a minute. “Aha! It’s in the back of Lisa’s van,” he finally says triumphantly.

He turns around to walk away and I see that the back of his suit has a large embroidered blue and red star design. Very patriotic.

“I’m worried we won’t have enough food,” the girl says as they walk toward some food tents that have been set up across the small woods from the medical tents. She glances nervously at the significant number of people already gathering in small herds. There are a lot more of them than there were this morning. If I had to guess, I’d say the number has at least quadrupled.

“Worry? Now, why would you go and do a silly thing like that for?” Hugh says cheerfully. “We can feed fifty thou a day easily. It’ll all be groovy.”

Their voices fade as I veer to the right and walk past the woods to my little yellow tent, Hugh’s red, white, and blue emblem watermarking my thoughts.

I wonder what the American flag means to Mark now, whether he still shares Dad’s enthusiasm for it. He’s tired of fighting in its name, that much I know. I want to come home, Cora. More than that, I want all of us to come home.

He didn’t even finish the story of Jack and his underwear. It’s the saddest letter he has ever written me.

I eye the knots of people everywhere, a lot around Mark’s age of twenty-two, a lot around mine. He should be here with them. If he hadn’t signed up for the army when he was the eager-eyed, antsy nineteen-year-old I had last seen—gung ho to follow in his father’s footsteps instead of continuing college—he would be.

I catch a glimpse of one small group that seems to have somehow procured a sheep. A guy with shoulder-length red hair, a long orange tunic, and white pants is lovingly petting it. He looks like a reverse flame. My eyebrows raise and I’m immediately worried for the animal, especially in the hands of city folk. I decide I can keep an eye on it from my medical tent.

“How’s it going?”

I turn. Wes, my brother, is sitting cross-legged right outside my tent, his light brown wavy hair hanging down to his shoulders. Even though he’s my twin, we hardly look alike at all. Aside from the curl in his hair, Wes has almost all of Dad’s coloring and features, and I have almost all of Mom’s. Wes and Mark look a lot more like they could be twins than we do.

“You left me with the hens,” I protest.

“Couldn’t deal with the Drip kissing Mom’s ass today. It was destroying my morning.” The Drip is Wes’s nickname for Ned. To be fair, he never really liked him even when he was my boyfriend. But ever since he accidentally caught me red-eyed the night we broke up, he’s been particularly furious with him. Wes has seen me cry maybe twice ever, and I’ve cried maybe a lifetime total of five times. It’s usually not how my emotions work, unless something bomb-shelter levels of catastrophic has happened.

“We have a letter from Mark,” I say.

Wes smiles. “Cool. I’ll check it out later. For now, do you have a bandage?” He holds up his right palm, where a pretty sizable wound is bleeding.

“What happened?” I ask as I kneel down beside him.

“No big thing. Just a splinter.” He gestures nonchalantly at the sign next to him. END THE WAR NOW it blares. It’s mounted on what looks like possibly the most decrepit piece of wood I’ve ever seen.